Video recruitment startup cracks the US Market

LANDING PADS CASE STUDY

Video recruitment startup cracks the US market

VideoMyJob is helping transform recruitment. With support from the Landing Pads program, the startup has exceeded its global growth targets well beyond expectations.

Finding the best person for a job is no easy task. Candidates today increasingly want to get a feel for an organisation’s culture before committing to a role. VideoMyJob offers an enterprise video solution that allows organisations and their employees to generate authentic, branded content that attracts likeminded talent. Through a smartphone app, users can film and edit footage, brand the video and distribute it on appropriate platforms.

The fast-growing HR tech startup was co-founded in 2015 by David Macciocca, David Carman, Kristen Graham and Chris Long. Macciocca previously owned a boutique recruitment company where he created a video for each role he handled. He realised the power of video in recruitment when sales and candidate quality went through the roof.

This success sparked the idea for VideoMyJob – a product that’s won three global awards for innovation in HR tech.

In 2017, as Chief Evangelist and Head of Growth, Kristen Graham turned her focus to US expansion efforts. It was serendipitous timing that she attended an information session in July about the Austrade Landing Pads program.

‘The San Francisco Landing Pad sounded ideal,’ says Graham. ‘It would be a safe space to test and learn without having the expenses of an office.’

As part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda, Austrade has established five Landing Pads in Berlin, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore and Tel Aviv. Landing Pads support market-ready startups to go global.

Over 90 days, participants are immersed in an environment that helps them accelerate the design and development of their business model. A Landing Pad Manager and Austrade sector specialists provide tailored business development assistance throughout the residency.

A supportive space to grow

Graham hit the ground in San Francisco in January 2018. She wasted no time, heading straight from the airport to the Landing Pad at WeWork, a dynamic co-working space in the city’s financial district.

Graham arrived with three key goals. The first was to understand the appetite in the US. The second was to investigate options for scaling. And the third was to build return on investment for the trip, and grow by A$30,000 monthly recurring revenue by the end of the program’s 90 days.

‘To get the most out of your time at the Landing Pad, I think you need a clear plan of what you want to achieve – and you’ve got to be realistic,’ she says.

For Graham, one of the most valuable aspects of the program was the supportive space and sense of camaraderie. ‘I’m a mother to four teenagers and was leaving my entire family at home. I’d never been to the US. So it was really important to me to feel safe,’ she says.

Another valuable component was receiving customised pitch coaching from an industry expert.

‘I realised I had a lot to learn about launching in America,’ says Graham. ‘My approach to sales in Australia is very much relationship-driven but I knew nobody in the US so I had to learn how to hustle really quickly, and be able to pitch our product.’
And hustle she did.

‘In just eight weeks we attended nine conferences, 14 influencer meetings, seven investor meetings and gave 140 demos of our app with a total of five pitches to various boards,’ says Graham. ‘The ripple effect opened up new opportunities and new introductions, building our brand awareness in the US and helping us to quickly establish a fantastic local network.’

Exceeding expectations

Graham attended a conference within the first few days of the program and quickly chalked up several sales. As a result, VideoMyJob met its monthly growth target within the first week. That set the tone for the entire 90 days, with the business signing up a string of major new customers including Oracle, GlaxoSmithKline, Schneider Electric, BOK Financial, and GroupM, with many more in the pipeline.

One of VideoMyJob’s biggest wins was signing up Monster, a major global online jobs board and a top-five US employment website, for a white-labelled version of the product and as a reseller partner.

This deal, finalised in September 2018 and being rolled out over several phases, will enable VideoMyJob to scale quickly and reach customers across the US. It’s also meant the business has become cash flow positive, growing their monthly recurring revenue by 340% since the program. The next step will see VideoMyJob expand their team.

Accelerating opportunities

Being on the ground in San Francisco also opened the door to new and unexpected opportunities. VideoMyJob was accepted into the Plug and Play Tech Center’s coveted Enterprise 2.0 Accelerator program in Silicon Valley, which Graham started soon after finishing the Landing Pads program.

Acting Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner San Francisco, Frances van Ruth, worked with VideoMyJob in the Landing Pad.

‘Kristen exemplified the best qualities of a successful Aussie scaleup – coming in with clear goals, hustling hard and taking advantage of every opportunity that came her way, and harnessing the power of the cohort experience in the program,’ she said. ‘The results speak for themselves. I look forward to seeing VideoMyJob’s continued global growth.’

With a global reseller, a large pipeline of international deals and a new product feature about to hit the market, things are looking bright.

‘Since the Landing Pad, I’ve been commuting between Melbourne and San Francisco and spent a total of 10 weeks in Australia. The momentum has been crazy and the US is now our number one source of growth. We definitely didn’t expect to experience the growth we’ve had. And that has only occurred because of the opportunity with Austrade.’

There’s so much tech going on in Tel Aviv, it’s quite mind-blowing. We wanted to tap into both the talent and the investment, as well as the time zone, which makes it easier to do business with Europe and the US.